Tuesday, July 21, 2015

By Louise KinrossIt's shameful that the death of Guy Mitchell (left), an adult with disabilities who drowned after falling into a cistern at an Ontario-funded group home in 2012, is only being reported locally in Hamilton, and not across Ontario and Canada.Hamilton Spectator reporter Susan Clairmont is doing a top-notch job of recounting the horror story unraveling at a coroner's inquest in this series of articles. The Ancaster home was run by Choices, an agency that receives 87 per cent of its funding from the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services.An 11-year-old girl with autism and two adults with developmental disabilities lived in the home, which veteran police who responded to the death described as the worst they'd ever seen: no heat, water or food and human waste everywhere.For months, outsiders contacted all the right authorities to raise alarms about the residents wearing filthy clothes and having unexplained injuries, but no one did anything. Two starving horses and a dogs were seized from the premises. But no one came for the human inhabitants. Until Guy Mitchell drowned.

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